Fifty years after then President Mao Zedong put forward the idea,
work began yesterday on a massive project to divert water from the
Yangtze River to drought-plagued northern areas.
The scheme, which is expected to cost US$59 billion, twice as much
as the massive Three Gorges Dam project in southwestern China, will
provide water to Beijing, Tianjin and the provinces of Jiangsu and
Shandong.
Ceremonies marking the start of the project were held in Beijing
and at the construction sites in Jiangsu and Shandong, where
hundreds of bulldozers began working.
The project consists of three water diversion lines with canals
running south to north. The three lines, each of which will run
about 1,300 kilometers across the eastern, central and western
sections of the country, will be built in three stages and link the
country's four major rivers - the Yangtze, Yellow, Huaihe and
Haihe.
Upon its completion in the middle of the century, the project will
be able to deliver 44.8 billion cubic meters of water into the
north each year, about the annual volume of water that runs through
the Yellow River.
Zhang Jirao, vice-minister of water resources, said the project
will significantly alleviate acute water shortages in the valleys
along the Yellow River, Huaihe River and Haihe River, in eastern
Shandong and parts of northwestern China.
These river valleys are home to more than one-third of the
country's farmland, grain output, population and gross domestic
output, but their per capita water resources are only one-fifth of
the national average.
The northern part of the 1,789-kilometer Hangzhou-Beijing Grand
Canal, built 1,400 years ago, will constitute the main body of the
eastern line currently under construction.
Work on the central line is scheduled to start next year. The
central line will run to the Beijing-Tianjin region and so far the
Danjiangkou Reservoir in Hubei Province has been raised so water
would then naturally flow northward toward Zhengzhou, capital of
Henan Province, where it will have to travel through a man-made
tunnel under the Yellow River toward Beijing.
Construction of the western canal, intended to bring water from the
upper reaches of the Yangtze to the upper reaches of the Yellow
River, will start in 2010, 10 years prior to the original plan, as
it is expected to play an important role in the country's go-west
campaign.
(eastday.com December 28, 2002)